Ron Simon: Who the heck can afford to smoke these days?

SAVE YOUR LIFE NOW! GRAB YOUR HOW TO QUIT SMOKING IN A WEEK FLAT BOOK NOW! A friend of mine is hopelessly addicted to cigarettes. What's worse, he is out of work and not a millionaire.
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Recently, I stopped at a tobacco shop to buy him a pack or two of the cheapest cigarettes I could find and discovered that a 10-pack carton of fags, as we used to call them, runs close to $50.

Makes you wonder what a nicotine patch would cost. Not that they work all that well.

While an occasional cheap cigar can make my day a little better, I can't imagine what it would be like to consume the three packs a day I was wiping out when I quit close to three decades ago.

It took hypnosis and a lot of luck to kick that habit.

Non-smokers have a hard time seeing just how addictive smoking can be. I imagine non-drinkers have the same attitude about alcoholics.

"Just quit!" one simpleton told me years ago. I could have punched him.

It was too hard for me to do on my own. But coughing fits in the middle of the night and dried blood on my pillow in the morning convinced me to try.

Obviously, I was getting nowhere on my own. So I tried a hypnotist who advertised sure success. She was in Columbus, which may have helped in some odd way.

She told me that if I really wanted to quit (and I sure did) that all I had to do was tap into my willpower. What she provided was the vital link between the desire to quit and the willpower that resided somewhere in my head.

She charged just $100. It's the best money I ever spent.

I tossed a pack of cigarettes into a trash can on the way out of her office. I had smoked nearly 10 cigarettes on the way down. I never had another for years. When I did, just for the heck of it, there was no appeal. No desire to light up another.

Yet I like a cigar now and then. Go figure.

What I asked my inner self to do during that long-ago session, was to quit wanting to light up. I didn't want to be bothered by other smokers. Nor did I want to suddenly eat my way up to 500 pounds.

All three wishes were granted. I went from 170 to 225 and that was acceptable. Older men and potbellies seem to go together like chili and peppers. Just as long as that potbelly doesn't look too obscene.

I know my late wife, Victoria, would never have given me the time of day had I shown up for our first date with a Camel dangling from my lip.

Recently, while portraying the late Ohio Gov. Mordecai Bartley during a living history session at Mansfield Cemetery, I used a lit cigar as a prop. I went through four of them and had to swear off for a week.

Tobacco, even in small amounts, can be pretty awful unless you are hooked.

In days of yore, I would fill a big glass ashtray at work with spent cigarette butts each day.

Tom Brennan, my boss then and now the high poobah at the News Journal, said my trademark was to take a drag of smoke, type a few paragraphs, take another drag and type some more. It went like that all day for years. The big surprise is that I have any lungs left.

The truly big surprise is that people are still smoking.

Ohio has put such heavy taxes on smokes that it is darn near impossible to keep going. So far, cigars haven't been hit that hard. They will be.

I do know that when Ohio voters decided to ban smoking in restaurants and public places, somebody decided to extend the rule to private clubs and to bingo parlors.

The result was a disaster. I know charity money that comes from gambling in private veterans clubs took a plummet when the smoking ban went into effect.

Bingo didn't do so hot, either. Those chain-smoking bingo players sort of faded from sight, and a lot of charitable organizations -- including the Mansfield Memorial Museum -- took a hit.

I do understand that smoking has become fashionable in the Far East. The Marlboro Man is now wearing a different sort of hat.

It would obviously be better to invest in tobacco shares than to indulge in the habit.

Incidentally, somebody once asked me if I inhaled while smoking a cigar.

"Do I look that crazy?"

We all know what happened to the late Marlboro Man.

Ron Simon is a retired News Journal reporter and columnist. Call Simon at 419... or e-mail rsimon@ neo.rr.com.

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